Merry Switchmas!

Our Holiday Wish

You've already given our team the best Christmas gift by helping us bring Genki to life, but we do have a small request that would be the cherry on top. Thanks to you guys we’ve been nominated on Reddit channel r/NintendoSwitch for most creative/best accessory on the Nintendo Switch - but I’m not going to lie - competition is fierce as we’re up against some pretty amazing first party fan favorites like Nintendo LABO and the Pokeball Controller.

It’s not really like us to just flat out ask for a vote but if you got Genki and you love it, what better way to show it than by helping vote for Genki here(Category 22 for Best / Creative Switch Accessory). You don’t need a Reddit account but it's always good to have one as the community is almost a million strong and our team will be hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) soon and will keep you posted when we can confirm the details. Okay, alright enough with the advertising, back to the good stuff.

Shipping Update

That's a lot of Genkis - almost there!

So the mail tracking has been moving slow but it looks like most if not all of the non-extended USB-C head customizations are out the door either on the way or in the case of 5,346 of you in your hands. For those in the exception field it highly likely means your product is stuck in German, UK, or even Swedish customs. UK seem to just want to hold it and charge you service fees on VAT (sorry), Germany wants everything from translated manuals to CE declarations (you can get them here if needed), and Sweden we don’t know as no one’s been too vocal from there.

As for the extended USB-C heads we've completed manufacturing, assembly and testing and have them boxed up and ready to go to the fulfillment warehouse once it opens again on the 27th post Christmas. So some of you may ask why the extended USB-C heads took so long, and why aren’t we offering them anymore:

24 hand soldered points (12 per side!)

So the besides the first batch of 300 or so we sent, the 7,000 next batch was fairly easy to produce - and the next 1,500 or so color combinations took longer than the first 7,000, and this last set 1,000 with custom extended heads and colors took even longer. We weren’t able to to automate the manufacturing process for these PCBs so they’re literally handcrafted electronics. We have a higher defect rate from testing obviously and so we even had to more thoroughly test is then a normal Genki. We were originally going to solder these one-offs ourselves but when demand exploded to just less than 1,000 units we knew we needed help so we enrolled our PCB supplier to help - and they were not happy. We had to entice them with the promise of more long-term business but basically assigned 5 soldering very highly-skilled solder technicians to assemble 160 custom USB-C heads per day, begrudgingly.

Taken at 3am last Saturday, the Nightshift

In order for us to head out of the factory without the Kickstarter left unfinished, we literally started to bring the assembly line to the airport hotel to finish up - you guys with your crazy order combinations! The process of customization is much more painful, more expensive, more time consuming, and something that isn’t sustainable ever again after this campaign. But we did it cause we promised - and frankly it wasn’t supposed to be so difficult. Me and Andrew have left, while Chris volunteered to wrap up the final shipments on Christmas Eve and we’ll get those packages out to the fulfillment warehouse when they open after the holidays with tracking numbers hopefully out by the end of the week.

Have you ever Googled yourself?

Well we did! And found some pretty awesome videos in the process. Checkout TimeLag Gaming’s video (one of our backers!) - the last part where he throws the competition into the Amazon return envelope says it all. Help get him over 1,000 views!

Another gem is Filip Miucin's review. He was one of the first major promoters of our *cough* knock-off and its good to know that he's come full circle to recommending ours.

Another one from Gaijin Hunter who did a great capture of the latency performance with Airpods:

We’re super pumped at everyone’s reviews and good to know that despite others being fast to copy us, our thoughtful attention to details has still put us on top! Oh and we love hearing your stories and seeing your awesome time with Genki, these are the ones that have put a smile on our face recently:

"My brother and I just took the Genki for a spin with Smash Bros. while everyone else was asleep. Audio was so much clearer and timely than the headphone transmitter we'd been using. And it's much easier to wrestle your sibling to the ground for pulling cheap moves when you don't have to worry about ripping out cords or damaging splitters!” - Joshua

This brings back so many childhood memories of family gatherings and my cousins getting together to play games. We didn’t have anything as amazing as Smash Bros Ultimate but we had old school Mario Kart and Super Bomberman.

"-dances- -dances-. it arrived today. works like a charm. tested with my Nuraphones and Air pods both with the switch and the ps4! my gaming life is now complete. well done Genki. great KS project. Great Product. wishing you all the best for the holiday season and future endeavors. lots of love!!" Stuart

We’re up here doing the happy dance with you Stuart!

"I just wanted to say that the product is just AMAZING. It works and its worth every penny. I’m so in love with it I put the Genki sticker on my new iPad Pro. Strong work! -Happy NYC Customer" - Daniel

This is super cool and it makes the effort we put into the sticker totally worth it. Not sure which sticker you used but the drawn one is done by the talented Tino - you can check out his Instagram here. Also I’m super curious as to where you put the sticker, I mean I wouldn’t imagine you’re covering the Apple logo but if you did we may have just hit cult status!

Kellan sent us these two photos of him playing Smash with his wife at the airport:

This is how Travel Pros Do It

Beats my attempt at a failed Lego Apple Watch stand

And I just want to say congrats on marrying an incredible woman and despite our love for the suitcase and lego stand, we will get you a new portable stand soon!

Add-ons and Replacements

Which brings us to the next point, accessories. So a lot of you have gotten Genkis are wishing you had got on of the sweet add-ons, whether it’s a dock adapter or a portable stand, or just a replacement case cause some jerk at the post office tossed it around. Our next step in January is to try to get away from a one warehouse distribution point and setup local warehousing in the US and Europe so we can get you those add-ons and replacements in a more sustainable and cost-efficient way.

Still Waiting for Genki and it was a Gift?

So unfortunately, due to whatever myriad of reasons you didn’t get your Genki that was meant to be a Christmas gift, we had one backer actually request us to write an email to them they could show their recipient that they did indeed try hard to get them a gift way ahead of time but it’s been delayed. So Chris’ girlfriend helped us design a little “Christmas Raincheck Card” which kind of apologizes to the receiver that we’re late. But they got it in time anyways, and now we have an extra card gone to waste. Honestly, we have mixed feelings about whether you should use this - so if you are do so at your own risk and print it on nice paper. We just want to give you the option - you know who’s getting your gift better than us so you’ll know how they react. We know it doesn’t really replace a real Genki but it shows that it was thoughtful despite being late, you can grab it here.

We’re taking a Slight Break

Our communications are gonna slow down to a crawl between now and New Year’s Day and we hope you'll do the same - don’t worry your tracking number will update! It’s definitely a shorter holiday than we were anticipating but the mix of popularity explosion (good) and crashing into every logistics hurdle (bad) we’re going to need to rest our eyes a bit and get some fresh air, good food, and the occasional drinking and celebrating with loved ones.

Sandra - this is not normal, we’ll help start an investigation. This is going to sound weird but we have two shipping vendors, one for KS one for IGG and both sides have orders that show the last update on Dec 21 being transferred to USPS without an update and we’re not sure what happened but we’ll get to the bottom of this

Richard - same as above it looks like there was a fumble between HK Post and USPS on Dec 21 and we’re sending fulfillment team to investigate

Hello Genki team, I'm a Californian backer, and I know there was a delay in shipment (since I ordered the splatoon colors), but just wondering if 3 weeks in transit has been normal for other backers? Thanks for having consistent updates!

Hi! I'm waiting patiently for my Genki, however my order status has been stuck on Info received since December 16th. Is there an estimate when the package will keep on rolling (or flying) in my general direction? Thanks in advance!

After paying the annoying £11 customs fees I finally received this today unfortunately the case is completely cracked! How do I request a replacement? And would suck if this is struck with more customs fees as it's dumb way to spend £11 on a case.

One from Sweden here, I just needed to pay for VAT for customs. Ordered a grey one and it arrived to customs the 17th Dec, which I payed the same date and got it delivered to me the 19th Dec. - Merry Christmas!

I'd love to give you some feedback. I'm grateful for the regular posts on the progress. Really one of the better experiences I've had with kickstarter. However, your shipping option leaves more than a little to be desired.
My package (grey, standard length, no customization) supposedly left Hong Kong on the 7th. I haven't had an update since and it also hasn't arrived at my door. Hopefully I get to update this feedback positively soon.

I should just wait until the next Switch that will probably have Bluetooth. This has taken way too long to ship. You should have been more on your game with it. I definitely will look out for this brand before I purchase from them again. I think I ordered this is July and six months later it’s still not in my hands. So far it’s the worst project I’ve backed with fulfillment.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from Denmark :) mine is on it's way, but I had no hurry. Crossing fingers that you can get some time to relax beside all that hard work you all have been doing to give us the best Christmas possible. You're awesome, and again..remember to take care of yourself. Just crossing fingers that my Genki arrives before my birthday January 21 :b haha..